Hypnagogia
by Wolfofsherwood
Summary: Hypnagogia, the state between sleeping and waking. It's a common ailment, but can Raven blame everything that happens during that night on this little transition? RedRae fluff! Sequel to Sleep Deprived.


**Wolf:** I'm sorry for not updating "One in a Million" right away but I don't want the chapter to suck poisoned eggs like that last one did and that's how it is right now. Because I haven't given you anything in a relatively long time, here's the long-awaited oneshot sequel to "Sleep Deprived." If you haven't read that one or didn't like it, it's not really all too related. It just refers back to it once or twice and you'll be able to get into it without a lot of trouble. Anyway, enjoy!

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It was night outside, but no one in the tower slept. They were too afraid of a certain demon girl. Raven had been sleeping badly for the past few weeks, and no one knew why. The teenagers all had darkish rings under their eyes and Starfire was just a little irritable from being yelled at by the only other girl in the tower. Raven was snappy and every time she fell asleep, the others would be plagued with terrible nightmares, even when they weren't sleeping. Their little bird was planning on leaving the Titans if she didn't get some proper rest soon and even Robin wasn't objecting at this point.

"I know some people out at the edges of the city, so I can stay with them until I get over this… problem I've been having," Raven told them, nodding to Beast Boy, who seemed to want to say something. The boy stopped speaking before he started, knowing somehow that she understood exactly what he was feeling about this.

No one wanted her to leave, but they couldn't stop sleeping. It wasn't going to work out between the group and Raven. Raven refused to speak about why she wasn't having her better days, and there wasn't a lot of work so they were all stuck together, no matter how much they wanted to kill each other.

Raven wouldn't talk, but she knew exactly why her eyes were droopier than usual and her manner was practically bestial. Red X, or Todd, as he called himself, hadn't shown up in a very long time. After the incident with his ribs, he'd shown up like clockwork every afternoon when she wasn't out working. He would nap with his head on her lap, and sometimes with his arms wrapped around her waist and his head on her shoulder. Raven slept happily after a while, smiling at Red X's wild comments and not-so-subtle advances. He hadn't kissed her more than once or twice in the time they'd spent together so she was hardly nervous around him. They were like two old friends for a few hours out of the day, free to share their thoughts and argue amiably with.

Red X had his own professional problems, but he and Raven never talked about it. Their time together was sacred and they didn't discuss things that would hurt their potential relationship. The girl was angry at him now, though. He left without telling her anything and she hadn't even seen him professionally for just as long as she hadn't been able to see him unprofessionally.

Without any proper goodbyes, Raven flew off with her few toiletries and met up with some friends she'd gotten acquainted with at the bookstore on the darker side of town. One of them, called Jupiter or Saturn or some other planet that Raven couldn't quite remember, told her that his house was as good as hers for the next month or so.

"I'm following the band, man," he told her slowly, drawing out all of his vowels in an annoying way. "The house is yours, and you can use up the whole kitchen if you want. It'll spoil by the time I get back anyway. The guest room is on the second floor." Raven took his keys and nodded, hoping that she would be able to get some sleep finally.

"Oh, but don't mind my roommate," the planet boy said with a sigh. "He's going to be in and out all the time, but he shouldn't go anywhere but the kitchen." Raven nodded again. At the moment, she didn't care if she scared some civilian. She was too tired to do anything but fly off in the direction of planet boy's house.

When the girl got to the house, however, she had to stop and appreciate the beauty of the place. The entire house was like a castle, all black wood that looked ancient and menacing crows sitting in dead trees. A few windows near the top story were broken, but wooden boards had been nailed to cover them from the inside. The lawn was pretty dead and there was a high and vaguely child-endangering fence. Raven smiled and walked through the front door, a little surprised that the door wasn't even locked.

The inside of the house was just as gloomy and old as the outside, but the inside smelled vaguely of marijuana and other illegal drugs that Raven could identify by the distinct smells. The living room was all old furniture and peeling wallpaper, but Raven didn't particularly care. Instead, she walked through the halls to the second floor, which supposedly had bedrooms that she could use.

The first room was smoky and looked like it belonged to some wannabe vampire. There were crosses upside-down on the walls and various supposedly-satanic symbols covering the floor. Raven passed the room and opened the next door.

This room was just as bad as the first, in the sense that it was decked out like some Barbie had barfed rainbows and it had spattered all over the place. Or, worse yet, Mother May I had worked her magic in the room. The place was all pink and flowery with ribbons and happy dolls and other things that made Raven shiver. This room was passed as well.

Finally, Raven didn't care and walked into the next room, sitting on the bed and sighing. This one was simply done with red walls and a dark floor. She put her bag next to the bed and set her head down on the pillow, finding the bed both hard and uncomfortable. Still, it was a bed and she closed her eyes to sleep. She wouldn't terrify anyone this way and no one would have to stay awake while she slept, fending off unknown evils while Raven worked out her anger at a certain thief.

It was many hours later when Raven awoke, much refreshed and very comfortable, especially considering that she wasn't home. The girl opened her eyes to find the source of her unexpected comfort and screamed, sending the stranger who had crawled into her bed flying across the room. The stranger wasn't some normal man, obviously, since he landed lightly on his feet and took off, almost as if he didn't want to be caught.

Raven followed and lost him in the kitchen, when he slipped away without a trace. The girl growled and turned, taking out her hanger on a can of soup that lay conveniently on the counter, as if waiting for her to eat it. The expiration date was nowhere near that day, so she opened the can and popped it in the microwave, adding water to the concentrate while she went.

That sleep had been pretty nice, and Raven felt like she could take on the day and work out her problems instead of focusing on that terrible thing called nightmare. The girl flipped on the television, watching the news while she waited for her food, noticing that the Teen Titans had a cameo interview on their latest work.

"Well, Raven decided to take a trip," Robin explained coolly. "She's out learning new spells and such, so the bad guys had better watch out." With that, he smiled his Boy Wonder smile and Raven turned off the news in disgust.

The girl finished her meal with a suppressed rage that Raven was going to get rid of once she had the time to sit down and meditate. The girl did just that, settling down on the old and ratty couch and smelling the fumes of blunts that had been burned among friends long ago. Slowly, Raven's mind drifted and she went to the gates of her mind and sat there, calming every part of her personality to a complete state of relaxation, except, of course, for Energy and Rage, and neither of them could calm down even if they had wanted to.

So relaxed was the girl that she didn't even notice when someone came into the house, unsuspecting and surprised when he saw a girl sitting on his couch.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked, not seeing the girl's face. Raven didn't turn, but her eyes cracked open and she gauged the situation. In all likelihood, this was the roommate she had been warned about. He seemed to be just a regular guy, but his voice seemed familiar to her for some reason. Raven's mind was still a little muddled by her long nap and she didn't recognize it right away.

The stranger saw Raven turn and his eyes went wide. Raven's eyes got wider as well, although not as much and she controlled her surprise well. Then her eyes narrowed in anger and she pressed the man against the wall, standing up and floating toward him.

"Todd, where were you?" she asked dangerously, nearly growling. Red X, unmasked and without any of his tools, struggled in Raven's grip before Raven realized that she was acting like some clingy girlfriend instead of the person he met up with occasionally for some TLC.

Raven turned away, holding her head in one hand. She wasn't the happiest girl at that moment and Red X put a hand on her shoulder, which she quickly shrugged off. The thief saw that Raven was ready to leave him for somewhere, and he took the hand not on her forehead.

"Sorry," he said simply, squeezing her fingers. Raven turned to look at him and sighed, pulling her hand out of his grip.

"It's none of my business where you go," Raven told him blithely. "I was just a little worried that you'd gone and gotten yourself _killed_ or something." That last statement came out a little sharper than Raven would have liked, but she walked away to cover herself.

"Aw, you were worried?" Red X asked, mistaking the tone for teasing. "I'm touched, Sunshine."

"Go away," Raven told him, her worry melting into anger that she didn't want to face up to just yet. Her Rage was being the usual monster and growling out how she had worried and worried and the stupid little thief had come up to her and expected her to be just happy to see him like some shallow schoolgirl who met up with her boyfriend after a week of being out sick. Red X had a high-risk occupation. Actually, that was an understatement. Red X had an I-risk-my-life-on-every-job-and-more-than-half-the-super-heroes-and-villians-in-town-want-me-dead-or-in-jail type of job. Needless to say, Raven had expected the worst and had been almost frantic in her sleepless nights when she had thought he really had ended up in a shallow grave by the roadside somewhere.

Well, that had been the first few nights that Red X had missed their meetings. Then, Raven had simply assumed that she'd been forgotten and that brought on a wave of emotions Raven wasn't used to feeling. She had been left behind before, forgotten and kicked out on the street with no one to turn to many times. This was different, though. She actually felt something for this man and she didn't want to see his face as he thought that she would be okay with his leaving her without warning.

Red X seemed to notice that Raven wasn't herself and sunk into the kitchen while Raven walked slowly up the stairs and back to the room, locking the door behind her. Red X was the man she was supposed to avoid, according to her temporary landlord, and so she would. The girl didn't want to talk to him until she got her anger under control. She'd just gotten her feelings under control, too!

The girl opened her bag and took out her change of clothes, noticing that there was an adjoining bathroom that she could shower in. The water would help calm her nerves and the girl felt dirty just because she'd been in that living room.

Red X heard the water start and sighed, his hands resting heavily on the kitchen counter. His head beat slowly into the wall and he didn't mind that a headache was starting to creep into the cranny behind his eyes. He'd been a fool to leave off talking to Raven for so long, and he should have known that the girl felt just as much as any other girl would have, even if her face remained expressionless. He'd spoken with her often enough about the things that made her angry and happy. Acting like he had died would have been firmly under the former category.

With slow resolution, the thief walked up to Raven's room, where the water had turned off and the bedsprings creaked. The girl was in her pajamas, which honestly weren't that different from anyone else's pajamas, and she planned on sleeping some more, finding insight in her dreams being the most useful course of action.

Red X waited until he was sure the girl was asleep before he picked the lock to the door and walked over to her bed. The little bird had pulled the covers up to her chin and was curled on her side, looking like a child half her age.

"I'm sorry, Sunshine," he whispered quietly, not wanting to wake her up. Raven stirred anyway and the thief froze, terrified what would happen if the girl saw him in her room for a second time. The first incident had been a complete accident and he honestly hadn't seen that there was someone in the room he usually used. This time, though, it was deliberate and the man really didn't want to see the girl in a bad mood, especially since she could easily break his ribs again.

Raven muttered in her sleep and Red X smiled, stroking the hair next to her ear and watching her sleep. Raven leaned into the touch and Red X saw darkness advancing around the sides of his eyes. It seemed that he wasn't exempt from the nightmares that Raven had nightly. The man pulled himself onto the bed and put an arm around Raven, finding that the darkness went away when he had his arms around the girl. He hadn't even notice the nightmares the other night, so it must have been a consistently good thing.

Red X took his time apologizing for every bad thing he'd done to the girl while she slept. He explained his long mission and how he hadn't wanted to worry her, but he guessed he failed that, hadn't he? And anyway, he didn't want to make her want to go with him, or give him advice, and he was sorry, truly sorry.

"I know," Raven said quietly, her face hard as she battled between forgiveness and even greater anger at the man for acting like her feeling s were so shallow there she would have worried about a man who could obviously take care of himself. The warmth at her back was nice and she closed her eyes once more, her clear and direct thoughts not quite back to her in her state of half-awake grogginess.

The two of them stayed like that for a while, while Raven gathered her thoughts and formed her opinion of Red X while he waited patiently. The two of them seemed to be in a state all their own and when Raven turned around, she found a dozing Red X and sighed. The man was completely unreliable in any time of importance.

"You're forgiven," Raven muttered quietly, kissing the thief and turning back. She would blame her lapse in judgment and the sudden blush accompanying it on her sleep deprivation. That was exactly the reason all this had started, after all. No one could claim that they made good decisions while under the influence of their dreams in the waking world.

"Good," Red X told her, his breath tickling her ear. It seemed that he was in the same boat and the two of them closed their eyes. Raven didn't bother slapping the man for his wandering hands and the two settled down into the most comfortable part of the bed, neither wanting to get out of the embrace even though neither was really comfortable with the other.

"Blame hypnagogia," Raven told the man before her eyes closed for the final time. Red X had no idea what she meant, but any reason to keep his sunshine in his arms was a good enough one for him.

Somewhere deep inside Raven's heart, Love pumped a fist in the air.

"See!" she cried, pointing to Intelligence and Sad. "I told you!"

"But we don't like him," Sad said depressingly. "He left and we all thought he was dead..."

"But I still win!" Love insisted. "Look at us!"

The three bickered for a while until Raven went inside herself and shut them up. Silently and with all the air a defeated personality could muster, Intelligence handed over the keys to Raven's drive.

"You win," the girl said to Love, pushing up her glasses. "Now, take care of us." Love only nodded, planning evil and mushy things that she could to with Red X. They would go on dates and go shopping and all sorts of things!

"This is the beginning of the end," Intelligence muttered to the others, sighing. "Raven can't blame _all_ of it on her sleeping habits, not when _she's_ behind the wheels."


End file.
